The Enormous Room

ee cummings' memoir about his imprisonment in a French prison during WWI for suspected espionage. (He and a friend were volunteer ambulance drivers.)

This is what happens when poets write books! Poets, the most painterly writers. Mr. Pound's Impressionist "petals on a wet, black bough." Billy Collins' fine, dark brush, "The moth has flown from its line and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed."

He SAW the details, in the scruffy cell-mates, to paint them, excrutiatingly, as the most wrenching creature known to man: Man. Which is the most ... True. And True is exactly what knocks us on our butts, artistically. And that's what he really wanted to do -- France misplaced these lifes and forgot them.

What a writer! A portrait-painter. It's a phalanx of paradoxes: bright, bitter, satirical, beautiful. A story about justice, the value of a life, etc. But to me, personally, it's also about Art. (Which I'm always trying to define, just like the Tao. "Which I think is ..." Shhh, Earth inturrupts. "No, really, I think it's ..." Fingers of wind against my lips.)

I'm so fascinated by the HUGE FEELING involved in creating. Like, what is it? I will venture an audacious suspicion that ee cummings ... loved Life. That he searched Life's face (like a lover! Oh, the drama!), for these intimate details, in the faces of Fritz, Haree, Bill the Hollander, B., the Cook, etc. A deep Appreciation (of these flea-bitten, greasy-soup-swilling "Delectable Mountains"). Passion! Being consumed. Outrage. Love.

Doesn't Rhyme, but May Resonate

Sometimes,
I wonder if I'm due
to suffer this way
until I find the words
to capture it
more exactly, piercingly,
than anyone ever
before.
So, I'll wait and wait
and write
and write.

I Was Stalked by Superman

By Lois Lane

I've been on the downside of a plummeting Eiffle-Tower elevator. My grip has slipped from steel siding, sending me spinning down from a skyscraper. I've been held captive, countless times, by mad genius Lex Luthor. But I've never felt terror, as a woman, as I have as the victim of a stalker.
I'm a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, conditioned not to feel fear, so it's a bitter pill to write this. But if my story can help someone else, I'll tell it.
In all those tight spots, the Paris plummet, the skyscraper skydive, the Lex captivities, Superman was there. Good thing. But also a bad thing.
His bold, erstwhile glances at me after a rescue, as I bobbed about in the crowd, pen and pad in hand, soon turned sinister. I could almost feel his piercing vision, oogling my very heart, organs.
"It'll never work, Superman," I told him, brusquely, several times.
Just that smile, in return. That haunting, haunting smile. He'd be back. Always. Trailing me through the skies, watching through the walls, even circling the Earth at beyond-sonic speed to get his way.
I toyed with the idea it was all my fault. I'm a hard-charging, beautiful, charasmatic player on the journalistic world stage. Then, there was that fling of a marriage, Niagra Falls. Blame it on the borealis, the soundtrack, the occassional kiss.
But when I say, "It'll never work, Superman," it means, "it'll never work."
And then it happened.
Only through therapy can I talk about it, to help free myself from the pain.
Last Tuesday, while on the roof of the Daily Planet for a casual smoke, Superman abducted me, high into the skies.
"Wha? Wha?" I stammered, but it was too late. During a tense conversation, he'd elevated us both into the air. The setting sun flickered on his grin as we buzzed my lakeside home. He knew where I lived. He even glanced toward the kitchen, where I, my new boyfriend, and small son cook nutritious meals together.
High above the planet, he told me he heard voices.
I am Lois Lane, but I no longer mistakenly feel like I can handle this by myself.
Support groups. Super-proof locks on doors and windows. A restraining order. Patrols by Metropolis cops. A thin shard of Kryptonite concealed in my boot.
Get help, Superman. You need it as much as I do. I say it because I really do care, even though, as far as "we" go, "It'd never work. It just wouldn't work."

Art For the Hilareous Joy of It

Pirates of the Carribean! I'm back to the arguement (art-gument) that Art is simply power.
With the Godfather, the fierce love of family/ legacy/ power v. right was a dark, mental ferment throughout. A given. And I yearned along with the little guy in Rocky. (A masterpiece). But ... have you ever looked at a barnacle, the pilings under a dock, roiling water, and felt this dark, gothic, mysterious pleasure? Yes. The ickiness of the sea! The overwhelming, frightening, awesome ickiness of the sea. I felt it deeply yesterday afternoon at the manitee (oops! matinee), and that's why I loved this movie. (A squid beard!!). And I will defend it to the end, wisps of hair escaping my tri-cornered cap, smouldering eyes fixed, saber ready.

Then, there's Dragonforce. In a nutshell: heavy metal about ... surviving/overcoming in a land ruled by dragons. I have no idea how serious they are about the dragons, but the music is very, very serious. I'm no speed metal afficionado, by any stretch, but whatever else, this is absolutely art.

I Hang it, Withering, On the Porch Light

South Carolina
pin oaks drop mistletoe in
July thunderstorms

My disposition,
a hopeful flag, though poisonous,
of green stuff woven

The Importance of Being Ernest (Hemingway)

Act III

An Adaptation by Evora Tangeline
(With Aplogies to E. Hemingway and O. Wilde)
(And special thanks to M. Labar, who did grad work on Gertrude Stein.)

NOTES ON CHARACTERS AND COSTUMES
LADY BRACKNELL: She is a woman of ample proportions, the ultimate in a dowager of literary society. Lady Bracknell never lacks for words, and she makes every word count, savoring each one down to the last syllable. She dresses in frumpy black shirts and gowns.

From ACT III

SCENE: The scene is a steamy Mexican terrace. It is a bright, cheery porch.

MISS PRISM: I was told you expected me in the vestry, dear Canon. I have been waiting for you there for an hour and three quarters.

LADY BRACKNELL: (sitting on a sofa, surrounded by paintings by Picasso). Prism!

MISS PRISM: (bowing her head in shame). Lady Bracknell!

LADY BRACKNELL: Come here Prism! (Prism approaches her in a humble manner.) Prism! Where is the baby? The baby in your charge. In the perambulator, the perambulator with the wheels that go round and round. The wheels that go round and round in the perambulator in which sat the baby, the baby in the perambulator.

MISS PRISM: (falteringly). I admit with shame that I do not know. I only wish I did. In a moment of mental abstraction, I deposited the manuscript in the bassinet and placed the baby in the handbag.

CHASUBLE. What do you think this means, Lady Bracknell?

LADY BRACKNELL: I dare not even suspect, Dr. Chasuble. A monster puzzle, a heavy choking, a neglected Tuesday.

CECILY: (glancing toward a sudden sound). Uncle Jack seems strangely agitated.

CHASUBLE: Can't hold his emotions.

LADY BRACKNELL: A sound. (The clicking of castinets are heard overhead again. Everybody looks upwards.) Elephant beaten with candy and little pops and chews all bolts and reckless reckless rats, this is this. (The noises stop.)